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Showing posts from May, 2008

The Olive Tree

My latest discovery of seven is Jacob 5: the Allegory of the Olive Tree. I will first outline the seven groups then I will try to explain to the best of my ability why each section belongs to its respective number. Unlike with a good chiasmus, I have not noticed a common evenness, or symmetry, between groupings of numbers. For example some numbers may have more emphasis than others; and that appears to be the case here where four has the largest volume of text. Main Structure: 1) vs 3-6 Desire to change 2) vs 7-14 Scattering/Separation 3) vs 15-28 Fruits of obedience 4) vs 29-51 Fruits of disobedience/Worthy of destruction 5) vs 52-60 God’s Mercy 6) vs 61-70 Gathering/Build up the church 7) vs 71-77 Perfection/Unity Since this is an allegory there are going to be many interpretations and meanings. None of them are necessarily wrong. I would say that this structure applies to any of the interpretations. To me this structure matches quite exactly with the process of repentance with a lit

Heaven or Hell

On my flights to and from Chantal's graduation I started to read a book that talked about digestion. And this is what I thought about this morning: The last step of digestion, in the large intestines, makes me think of the millennium. This step is where the body tries its best to extract the last possible healthy nutrients from the waste before utterly rejecting it. During the millennium all the wicked suffer the wrath of God, all being in hell and candidates for outer darkness. Those who finally accept baptism and receive the Holy Ghost are saved and not sent to outer darkness. The church and the gospel does it's very best to save every soul that wants to be saved in the Kingdom of God. All those who do not go to hell go to heaven. This is doctrine in the Bible and the Book of Mormon. Many members of the church think that we have a conflicting understanding from mainstream Christianity because D&C 76 can be interpreted in different ways; but in the introduction when it say

Why Seven?

I am now a blogger. I thought for my first entry I would explain the title of my blog. If you know me much you know that my favorite number is seven. There are many reasons for this, and they are all scriptural. The sevens that are not scriptural, I created based on the scriptures and are my ponderings or inspirations. The idea of a seven structure existing in the scriptures was introduced to me during a BYU Education Week in 2004 and I continued to learn about it each year for four years. Here are some of the scriptural examples: The creation (this is the most obvious one, all accounts), the seven feasts and festivals, the seven cities of refuge, the seven sons of Jesse, the seven parables of Matthew 13, the seven houses (of the Lord), the seven churches of revelation, and the seven beatitudes (ask me about the eighth). Some that are not obvious are the structure of the allegory of the Good Samaritan, the progression in Isaiah 55, the rest of the sermon on the mount (or at the temple)